With Victorious coming to an end, Nickelodeon still wished to remain in the Ariana Grande business, and began developing a spin-off series called Sam and Cat, which would partner up her Victorious character with Jennette McCurdy’s Sam Puckett, a regular character on the Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly. The show saw the pair pool resources to launch their own babysitting business, with presumably hilarious results.

But, off-screen, the sitcom was plagued with drama. Like Victorious, there were rumours that Grande and McCurdy were feuding, while Grande was also eager to flee television and launch her music career.

There were reports that McCurdy was upset that Grande was earning a bigger paycheck, while only Grande showed up to collect trophies for the show at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards -- partly as McCurdy was in hiding due to a sexually explicit photograph leak. Subsequently, Sam & Cat only lasted one season, despite Nickelodeon’s eagerness for it to continue.

McCurdy later said, "I just feel that Ariana and I were and are extremely close and extremely like-minded in a lot of different ways, and then sort of as the show dissolved everybody wanted to find some sort of hidden meaning in our relationship and some like drama, and I think we butted heads at times but in a very sisterly way. Like she knows me so well and I know her so well that I think it was unfortunate that things got misconstrued."